


Five Things Mycroft Foretold and One Thing He Didn’t

by SevenCorvus



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Angst, Dreams, Family, Fluff, Gen, Kink Meme, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Slash, Prompt Fic, Slash, prescience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 02:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevenCorvus/pseuds/SevenCorvus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Things Mycroft Foretold and One Thing He Didn’t</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things Mycroft Foretold and One Thing He Didn’t

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this [prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/10038.html?thread=50849846#t50849846). Feedback is love and will be rewarded with cookies (and smut).

It was one thing to appear prescient. He was rather good at predicting things after all, and people became so delightfully off-balance when he was proven right. It was another thing, however, to actually be prescient.

Both of the Holmes brothers took in much more data than the average individual, and while Sherlock used this skill to piece together events and find connections, Mycroft frequently used it in a rather different way. Instead of determining what did happen, he often predicted what was going to happen. He didn’t think it was all that difficult. He simply put his brain to the task of computing all the possible variables and calculating the most highly probable result. Nothing wholly remarkable. The dreams though were an entirely different story.

1.

The first dream of this type he can remember having, was when he was seven years old. He dreamt about having a little brother, someone he could watch out for, who would look to him for advice. Someone who would understand him, would enjoy his company. He didn’t think anything of it when he awoke.

When a week later his mother announced she was pregnant and later gave birth to Sherlock. He decided that the dream must have been simple wishful thinking.

2.

When he dreamt about a funeral at fifteen years of age, he didn’t give it anymore thought than his other dreams. Except for thinking that it was rather oddly morbid of him. It wasn’t until his father dropped dead of a heart attack the very next day that he decided he might need to rethink his position.

Mycroft was not in any way superstitious. He didn’t for a second believe that he actually had some mystical power to foretell the future. He knew that humans took in much more information than they were consciously aware of, though he was aware of more than most, and that the brain continued to process stimuli while asleep. He simply concluded that his brain must persist in analyzing variables and predicting outcomes while he was sleeping and translated those outcomes into dreams. Obviously he had to have unconsciously picked up unnoticed clues to his parents’ physical state. It was all perfectly logical.

3.

It was all well and good to have reached this conclusion, but it was another thing to be able to put the information into use. The dreams came so rarely and for the most part didn’t differ significantly from his other dreams. Still, he was determined to be on the lookout and see if next time he couldn’t make use of the knowledge in some way.

Thus, when he had a dream about a highly secure and secret meeting, he was forewarned and unsurprised by an attempt to recruit him for a very confidential department. Mycroft rather thought that his composure throughout made quite an impression.

4.

One didn’t need to be unusually skilled at divining the future, however, to foresee the likely results of Sherlock’s steady decline. Mycroft held off from interfering too much though, not wanting to antagonize his brother more than was necessary.

Dreaming of Sherlock dying from a drug overdose was the final straw. He had him checked into a private rehab facility the next day.

5.

Mycroft regularly used his unique abilities in his work, including his dreams, rare though they were. He had after all been rather successful. Unfortunately, one of the hardest things about his work was having to acknowledge and try to accept that he couldn’t predict or prevent everything.

He didn’t like to admit it, but he had always known that he couldn’t control everything. After all, there was always a human element involved and those could be on occasion tediously chaotic. Mycroft was a master at recognizing and manipulating variables, but that was not a true guarantee. It didn’t do him much good when there were variables he was unaware of. Which was why he had made it his mission to be aware of every variable. Inevitably there would be times when things would occur beyond his possible intervention.

Or at least that’s what he tried to tell himself when frenzied dreams of violence and explosions did nothing to prevent the London terrorist attacks.

+1.

There was of course one thing in his life that he had never had a hope of predicting, the presence of John Watson. From the moment they had met, John had refused to comply with his predictions and instead persisted in surprising him at every turn. He seemed to delight in going against expectations. But then how could Mycroft ever have expected to be gifted with the love of this truly remarkable man.


End file.
